‘I’ll take it.’
He stared at her. ‘You can’t be serious.’
‘You do want to sell it?’
‘Yes. Yes, of course.’ He tried to restrain the wave of relief that swept over him.
‘I’ll take the furniture too. I think you said that was included if I wanted it?’
‘It is. Oh, indeed it is.’
‘And the Land Rover?’ For the first time she gave him a real smile. ‘I can’t believe you want much for that.’
He shook his head ruefully. ‘Indeed not. In fact I’ll throw it in for nothing.’
‘Good. Thank you. I can pay you in cash. When can I move in?’
He blinked. ‘When you like, I suppose. As you see, we – I’ve – moved all our personal belongings out. I don’t want any of the crockery or kitchen stuff –’ Pretty kitchen stuff, so eagerly bought, so much hated now. ‘As far as I’m concerned you can have it today. Don’t you want to see anything else?’ He was almost disappointed. Now that he knew she liked it he wanted to show her round properly, he wanted her to admire the details, he wanted above all for her to know how much he had loved this place. Once.
She shook her head. ‘I’ll see it all soon enough.’ For a moment her voice softened. ‘It’s just what I wanted.’
Her needs were minimal. All her worldly belongings, the items she had allowed herself to keep after forty-four years of living and loving and suffering, filled a couple of large suitcases and a few cardboard boxes. The day she moved in nature decided to be kind. The sky was a soft downy blue, the water of the loch as iridescent as a dragonfly’s back; autumn sunlight warmed the stone walls and shone obliquely across the deep window sills into the rooms. She wasn’t a martyr. She had bought some warm woollen throws for the sofa and beds, some decent food and wine as well as the basic supplies and she had brought an ancient typewriter. It wasn’t until she had signed on the dotted line that she had thought about her lap top. It was there in one of the boxes – fully charged, but for how long? The answer would be to invest one day in her own generator, if she stayed, but for the time being she would make do and appreciate the primitive life she so craved.
Abandoning her boxes she wandered down towards the loch. Out of sight, around the corner, the long narrow arm of water opened into the sea, but up here it was calm and transparent, moving gently to the touch of the lightest wind. There might not have been another person in the world.
Except there was. As she turned back towards the house she saw the figure out of the corner of her eye just for a second on the far side of the inlet.
She frowned, squinting against the shimmering reflections. No, there was no one there. No one at all. She had imagined it.
For the first thirty-seven years of her life Caro had been a normal person. She had gone to school, proceeded to university, come out with a respectable degree. She had been drawn to journalism, worked on regional papers, then a national before marrying a photographer and producing two talented children for whom she had given up steady work and gone freelance. Phil Spalding had been the kindest, nicest, best thing that had happened to her until his God had taken him away. He had become a parson – something she had tolerated with a certain amount of horrified humour. But that had not been enough for God. Phil had developed cancer and seven years ago he had died. She had tried to accept it; tried to live with it; tried to come to terms with such cruel and unnecessary waste, but she couldn’t. Her life had fallen apart. The children had drawn away, involved in their own lives and friends, trying to be supportive but afraid of her anger and bitterness. There was nothing left. Until she had the dream. ‘Pull yourself together, Caro,’ Phil had said. He looked much as he had before the illness started to take its toll. Tall, good-looking; his eyes gentle but firm as he stood at the end of her bed. ‘You are frightening everyone away and ruining their lives and your own. Be alone for a bit. Get to know yourself again. Get away from here.’ He waved his arm around the room – their room. ‘You’ve got a book to write, remember?’ He smiled, that lovely quizzical smile, and reached out to her. She sat up, wanting to touch him, to hold him close, to smell the lovely warmth of his skin, but he had gone and she fell back on her pillow and cried.
It was the turning point. She gave the kids most of the contents of the flat, sold it and gave them each a third of the money in trust, keeping the rest for herself. Her plan had been to travel and write that book – the book she had been going to write when she first met Phil. Then she had seen the ad in the paper and she had heard Phil’s voice in her head as clearly as she had always heard it in the past. ‘Go for it, Caro. You need to give yourself some space. Then start writing.’
Space! She looked round and laughed out loud. What had she done!
Two days later she saw the figure again. Just an outline really, on the shore near the broch, standing watching her as she pottered around. She narrowed her eyes against the glare off the water. It was the same man.
It took an hour to walk around the inlet. It was a cool misty day and she took deep lungfuls of the pure air as she walked. The broch consisted of two castle-like concentric circles of dark stone, about thirty feet high, with steps and passages within the thickness of the double walls. It was completely ruinous on one side, fairly intact on the other. In the centre a perfect circle of grass and weeds had grown lush, sheltered from the wind. She stood and stared round listening to the silence, the lap of water on the stones on the beach, the cry of curlew and sandpiper, the hiss of wind across the dried heather stems outside the walls. Suddenly she shivered. She turned round slowly, staring up at the blind, shadowed walls. Someone was watching her; she could feel it.
‘Hello?’ she called, her voice echoing off the stone. ‘Is there anyone there?’ There was no answer.
She did not stay long. As she picked her way back around the loch, scattering wagtails and gulls before her, a figure appeared on top of the ruined wall and watched her leave. She didn’t turn round and never saw him.
‘You’ll be wanting to charge up your phone and your lap top while you’re here?’ Mrs Maclellan welcomed her into the post office shop with a smile. ‘Mrs Foster always did that. I make a small charge for the electricity which I’m sure you won’t mind.’
Caro’s mouth dropped open. So that was how it was done! She had thought very little about her predecessors and was, she realised, completely incurious about them. Rich. Spoiled. A bit petulant. That was how she visualised Patricia Foster. Of no interest at all.
Slowly she fell into a routine. Once or twice a week she drove to the village; sometimes she explored further afield and at last she had time for herself. Time to think. To remember. And to write. She bought back-up batteries for the lap top and smiled at the thought of Mrs Mac retiring on the proceeds of her battery charging service. And she continued to wave from time to time to her unknown neighbour across the loch. Because he was still there.
The first time she saw him close up was a shock. She had been sitting on the shore with her notebook, outlining her thoughts for a series of articles – the idea for the book had still not come – when she glanced up and saw him only a hundred yards away. Dressed in some sort of rough highland garb, his hair long and unkempt, he was watching her. He was younger than she had expected; quite good-looking. She raised her hand in greeting, but he ignored it, staring right through her. She shrugged and turned back to her notes. When she looked up again he had gone.
The next time, though, he looked straight at her and he smiled. She felt a shock of pleasure. The smile was warm; friendly. ‘Hello!’ It was the first time she had spoken to anyone for several days. He didn’t reply. She wasn’t sure if he had even heard her but just for a moment his gaze lingered appreciatively before he turned away.
‘Who is the young man I see out by the broch?’ she asked next time she was in the village.
Mrs Mac glanced up from Caro’s purchases, frowning. ‘There’s no one lives up there. No one at all,’ she said sharply. ‘You keep away f
rom there. It’s a dangerous old place.’
Two days later when Caro saw him in the distance he raised his hand in greeting before turning away. She stared into the watery sunlight, trying to see which way he went. His presence was beginning to irritate and intrigue in equal measures and it was almost without conscious decision that she set off after him, intent on finding out where he came from.
The broch was shadowy, very still within the high dark stone walls. She stood in the centre looking up. ‘Hello?’ she called.
A pair of jackdaws flew up, crying in agitation as they circled before settling back into the silent shadows.
‘Hello? Are you there?’
And suddenly there he was standing at one of the dark recesses in the broken wall. He raised his hand and beckoned.
She made her way across the grass to the archway in the grey stone. Under it a flight of broken steps led up inside the wall. She stood at the bottom looking up into the darkness then, cautiously, she began to climb. ‘Where are you? I can’t see.’
Groping her way slowly she rounded a bend in the stair and there he was, standing above her, framed by gaping stone. Seeing her appear he smiled, that warm gentle smile, and beckoned again.
She took another step towards him eager to be in sunshine again but as she reached the top he stepped back out of sight. Where he had been standing there was no wall. Nothing to support her at all. With a scream she found herself clawing at the stone as she began to fall.
* * *
The bespectacled face swam into focus for a moment, disappeared and then returned in more solid form. It smiled. ‘So, we are awake at last. How are we feeling?’ The hand on the pulse at her wrist was warm and solid. Reassuring.
Every bone and muscle in her body throbbed. ‘What happened? Where am I?’
‘You fell at the broch. You’re in hospital, lass, thanks to Mrs Maclellan.’
Caro realised suddenly that the post mistress was sitting on the far side of her bed.
‘How did you find me?’ Slowly she was beginning to remember.
‘Mrs Maclellan took a lift out with the post van to see you.’ The doctor paused, wondering how to describe the woman’s hunches; her second sight. ‘She remembered what you had said about the laddie up at the broch and wanted to warn you about him. Luckily for you, they saw you fall, from the road.’
Caro closed her eyes. She felt sick and disorientated. ‘What did you want to warn me about?’
The two beside her glanced at one another. The doctor shrugged. ‘It’s our belief that you saw a lad called Jamie Macpherson. He lived near the broch some while ago and fell in love, so the story goes, with a young woman he met up there. No one knows what happened but one day the boy disappeared. They found him where we found you, at the foot of the wall. He had a lassie’s silk scarf in his hand.’ He paused, scrutinising her face cautiously. ‘Mrs Foster knew the story. She was quite obsessed about it. She would stay up here when her husband went back to London, making notes to write a book about it.’
Caro lay back against the pillow, her eyes closed.
‘Poor lady. It seems she followed him to the broch one day and climbed the stair just as you did.’
Caro frowned. ‘I don’t understand. You said he was dead?’
He nodded. ‘They should pull that old place down. It’s too dangerous. The steps are broken. She fell. Just as you did. Only in her case, no one came.’
‘She was killed?’ Caro’s eyes flew open.
He nodded gravely.
‘Oh how awful. Poor woman. How sad. No wonder her husband wanted to leave.’
‘Aye.’
‘Did you follow Jamie out there?’ Mrs Maclellan sat forward on her chair.
Caro shrugged. ‘I followed someone. Young. Good-looking. Wearing a highland plaid.’
‘That’s him.’ The woman nodded.
‘And he’s a ghost?’
‘Aye.’ She was matter-of-fact.
Caro shivered.
‘I suppose you’ll leave us now, once you’ve recovered.’ Mrs Maclellan shook her head sadly.
Caro shrugged, trying to make sense of the jumble of words spinning in her head. ‘I don’t want to leave. I love it here.’ She smiled weakly. ‘I’m a writer too, like Mrs Foster.’ Was that a voice she could hear in her head? ‘Go for it, Caro. This is the book!’ She looked up at them. ‘Perhaps I should write the story for her? And for him?’ She hesitated. ‘I wonder, would that help them find peace, do you think?’
‘Aye, I think that would be the right thing to do.’ Mrs Maclellan smiled at her. Was she the only one, she wondered, who could see the handsome clergyman standing next to the bed, nodding in approval.
Sands of Time
1
It had snowed in the night and a skim of white lay across the rough grass, clinging to the banks of rhododendrons, weighing down the leaves into graceful arabesques across the track.
Toby Hayward parked his car near the ruins of the ancient castle which rose from the uneven ground ahead of him. A tall man, in his early forties, he looked the archetypal Scotsman, with sandy hair, high colour and handsome regular features. Dressed in a shabby waxed jacket and old boots he stood for a moment trying to find his bearings. The place was deserted; it was too cold for visitors and the forecast that the weather was going to grow worse would deter any strangers from joining him in this very personal pilgrimage. The ruins were picturesque, huge and gaunt, the high broken walls, the gaping windows, the areas of castellation silhouetted against the snow and the backdrop of stately ancient trees.
The imposing stable block that had once graced this great pile and which had been destroyed by fire in the latter half of the nineteenth century had long ago been pulled down. The castle itself had also been ravaged by fire, this time shortly after the end of the First World War. The ruins had not been rebuilt. Toby grimaced. Two devastating fires. Coincidence? Who would ever know now.
He fished in his pocket for the guidebook his mother had given him before he left London for Scotland a couple of weeks earlier. It traced the history of the castle and of the Carstairs family from the fourteenth century to its heyday under the ninth earl, the infamous Victorian traveller and occultist. On page twelve there was a reproduction of a portrait of the earl. Chewing his lip Toby stood staring down at it. The Roger Carstairs who gazed out at the world also had handsome regular features, offset by dark arrogant eyes. He was dressed in the sort of middle-eastern costume favoured by Lord Byron and T.E. Lawrence.
Turning the page Toby stared down at the entry about Lord Carstairs. It was the final paragraph that intrigued him.
‘The ninth earl maintained his enigmatic reputation to the last. The date and manner of his death are unknown, but rumours abounded as to the full horror of what occurred. It was said that he had perfected a method of transporting himself from place to place and even
from one time zone to another by magical or shamanic techniques which he had learned on his travels in Egypt, India and North America. The methods he used, so it is said, left him vulnerable to the demonic forces which one day overwhelmed him. Maybe the ninth earl did not in fact die at all. As you look around the ruins of the castle which was once his home, be aware that the eyes which scrutinise you from the shadows may not be those of a ghost. They may be those of a man in hell.’
Toby shuddered. What rubbish. Who wrote this stuff?
He moved on across the grass leaving transparent ice-sheened footprints in the snow, heading for the main entrance to the castle with its imposing flight of steps. These led up to the rounded arch which had once surrounded the huge oak door and he stood there for a moment looking into the gaping space which had once been the great hall. The echoing cry of a jackdaw broke the intense silence and he watched the black shadow of the bird sweep between windows open to wind and snow.
For four years now Toby had lived within ten miles of this old pile without being aware of its existence.
He wished he still didn’t know.
He moved forward into the space which had once been the centre of the household’s activity and looked up. Five fireplaces, one above the other, rose up within the floorless keep, each successively smaller. A huge pile of twigs filled the top one, the chosen dwelling place of the jackdaw family, sole occupants now of the building which had seen so much of Scotland’s history. And, so it turned out, that of his own family. He shuddered. The cry of the jackdaw was echoed by the wild mew of a buzzard circling the surrounding hills.
Toby rammed the guidebook into his pocket and moved on. It was cold within the walls of the castle, shadowed from the sun which outside was fast melting the night’s fall of snow. All around him he could hear the sound of water, from the river which ran in full spate round the bottom of the escarpment on which the castle stood, from the sea of rhododendrons and from the dripping icicles and the melting snow.
Slipping on the icy, worn stone steps, he ducked out of the keep and walked into the rectangular area which, according to the guidebook, had formed the north tower, an extra block of living quarters built in the sixteenth century, but which had then been torn down to form the base of the carriage house and stables constructed much later by the seventh earl. It was here that his grandson, Roger Carstairs, had kept his museum, the collection of artefacts which had been destroyed by the catastrophic fire started, so the story went, by a disaffected servant while Roger was away on his travels. Included in this collection, presumably, were all the things he had brought back from his trips to Egypt.
Toby sighed. Egypt. Where only a few brief weeks before he had first met Anna.
He had set out on the visit to Egypt with such optimism. True it was going to be a package tour from Luxor to Aswan, with a boat full of strangers, but that was OK. That was his job. A painter and travel writer, he was going to report the experience for a Sunday paper in full humorous detail – the ups, the downs, the good places, the spoiled places, the nice people, the sad people. He was going to go home with a sketch book full of wonderful ideas and as a bonus he would catch some winter sunshine.
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